Network Centric to Data Centric Networks (Data Distribution Service)

MODERN MILITARY TACTICAL NETWORKS
(NETWORK CENTRIC TO DATA CENTRIC)
By Muhammad Adil Khan
Introduction:-
In current era of 21st century where people are living in information age, quick and
reliable means of communication is an essential requirement, whether it is Military,
corporate sector, or an individual domain. However, traditional communication networks
are not capable enough to meet the requirements of rapidly scalable, multi-cast, and
dynamic distributed systems. Especially, in military battle fields and disaster management
areas where no infrastructure for networks exists and mission leaders requires clear
situational awareness to achieve their targets.
Presently, all modern militaries have adopted the doctrine of net-centric operations
and warfare (NCOW) to achieve information dominance. The Global Information Grid
(GIG), Future Combat System (FCS), C2 Constellation, and FORCE net are examples of
net-centric operations, where multiple systems-of-systems integrate thousands of
platforms, sensors, decision nodes, weapons, and war fighters through heterogeneous
wire-line and wireless networks.
Primarily, NCOW exploit information superiority to achieve strategic and tactical
goals. To deploy NCOW doctrine on battlefield it requires extremely robust, reliable,
flexible, and interpretable information sharing mechanism.

Net-Centric Networks (NCN) Architecture
Today’s networks are centralized, monolithic, uni-cast and tightly coupled, but at the
same time these are highly inefficient in dynamically changing / scalable and multi-cast
environment. Fundamentally, Net-Centric networks were developed for peer-to-peer
communication between nodes, with the core role of sending data to their intended
recipients without knowing the information inside the payload ( just bits & bytes with no
meaning). The only meaningful information known by the network is source and recipients’
addresses, nothing more. In these cases, both producer and consumer know the
endpoints, and data exchange format is agreed upon and unique.
Now the question comes in our mind, what is the difference between
Net-Centric Operations / warfare and Net-Centric Networks? Are both not the same
thing? The answer is No. NCOW deals with operational application of information while,
NCN remained focused on transportation of data.
Net-Centric Operations / warfare Requirements and NCN
Sharing of all the real-time or near real-time battle field situational information is the
basic requirement of net-centric operations for situation judgment, coordinate decision and
real-time control. The collection, transmission, processing and distribution of information
faces the requirement of safely, timely, efficiently and especially correct information to the
right place in the right time. The challenges faced by traditional information distribution

structure or NCN in modern battlefield scenario where combat nodes are increasing more
and more are:-
(I) Interconnection. In battlefield, combat nodes are widely distributed and have
very different requirements for information exchange. Thousands of combat
equipment and subsystems used today in the battlefield are created by independent
parties, often using the different programming languages, operating systems, with
different technical standards / protocols and misaligned interfaces, with no
interoperability.
(II) Dynamic real time adaptation. Battlefield data distribution system should
discover dynamically topology changes as combat nodes are added or removed on
the battle field.
(III) Incremental and independent development. Combat equipment and
subsystems are often developed by independent parties who will change or
upgrade their components on regular basis.
Data Centric Network (DCN)
To provide real-time connectivity to all nodes within the battlefield framework, it is
required to move the limited intelligence and meaningful information away from the
individual system (Application Layer) and onto the network as a whole (Lower Layers).
Once the data is abstracted from the individual system and made available across the
network, numerous applications can be written to analyze and act on it, providing a
significantly higher level view and a faster response time.

As a fact, battlefield is an especially difficult network environment, with both signal
interference and transient data sources. In NCN, when a data source or connection is lost,
the data receiving node loses that information, even if it may be available elsewhere on the
network. In a data-centric environment, the data is resilient, in that it is abstracted away
from the source. If there are multiple sources or connection options, data remains
available as long as one source or connection remains active. By achieving this level of
fault tolerance, the data-centric network remains highly operational even as data from
individual sources degrades.
Data-Centric principles describe a method to expose your data into a global data space
maintained by the network itself. The data becomes accessible to any application or
system requiring it and is decoupled from the system state of the application producing it.
In such an environment there is no need to know or care from whom the data is originated,
nor how it became available (transport mechanism).
DCN reduces the impact of challenges faced by traditional information distribution
structure or NCN in modern battlefield scenario by deploying following models:-
Global Data Space
Node
Receiving
Node
Transmitting
Node
Receiving
Node
Transmitting
Node
Transmitting
Node
Receiving

(i) Quality of Service (QoS). With the QoS, DCN control the behavior of the
communication according to the application requirements. In particular, QoS provide
the ability to control and limit the use of resources like network bandwidth or
memory as well as reliability, timeliness and persistence of the data transfer.
(ii) Automatic Discovery. In order to react to changing environment or combat
missions it must be possible to dynamically add or remove combat equipment and
subsystems without the need of rebuilding the control software. DCN addresses this
aspect with its decoupled architecture approach and the automatic discovery of
combat node participation.
(iii) Platform-independent Model (PIM). Data to be exchanged in DCN is defined in
platform-independent language. It can be implemented for any combination of
processor architecture, programming language and operating systems to allow
seamless communication between the combat nodes. This approach also enables
any future enhancement efforts, freedom to better use COTS hardware, and also
enables engineers to make design decisions that are based on system objectives
rather than on specific technologies.
Military DCN Use Examples
Hundreds of military systems use DCN as their key integration and communications
backbone. At present US Department of Defense (DoD) has made mandatory to all military
equipment manufacturer in US to incorporate data-centric capability in every system using
Data Distribution Service protocol (DDS). Applications include most Navy surface
programs, unmanned vehicles, ground stations, sensor systems, and intelligence.
(i) Army JBC-P (Blue Force Tracker)
(ii) Aegis Open Architecture
(iii) Ship Self Defense System (SSDS)
(iv) Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
(v) DDG 1000 Destroyer
(vi) Landing Platform Dock (LPD)
(vii) General Atomics Ground Control Station AWACS
(viii) B-1B
(ix) Common Link Integration Processing (CLIP)
(x) BASE TEN Robo Scout
(xi) Plath Communications Intelligence
(xii) UK MoD Generic Vehicle Architecture
(xiii) Wind River
In defense systems, including C4ISR, radar, and simulation applications, fractions
of a second make the difference between success and failure. Data-centric architectures
will change the world by making information truly pervasive. Pervasive information,
available in real-time, will enable much more capable distributed, data critical applications
for modern battlefield.

Network Centric to Data Centric Networks (Data Distribution Service)

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